Hi everyone,
This is just to share with anyone who is intersted in these things.
Among the things I love is funny stuff, heroic fantasy, sci-fi, role playing games and suchlike and within the past few months I have discovered three web comics that bring all this together:
DM of the Rings - this web comic uses screen captures from the Lord of the Rings movies to show what it would be like if Tolkien's epic tale was actually a Dungeons & Dragons game being played by a bunch of guys sitting around a table with no foreknowledge of the story Tolkien told (but with plenty of knowledge of the typical references to Monty Python and the Holy Grail that every fantasy gamer knows and loves).
Darths & Droids - this one uses screen captures from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and similarly portrays it as though it were a group of people (including a little girl and a theater major) sitting around a table playing a sci-fi role playing game. I find that this version is much more enjoyable than the actual movie - at the very least it actually makes more sense and is laugh out loud funny besides.
Order of the Stick - This one uses stick figures to portray the action of a D&D type epic adventure campaign. It starts off kind of crude and simple, but as it goes on it gets funnier (less inhouse D&D rules jokes), the art gets a little tighter and more intricate and experimental, and the story really becomes quite engaging as it take on epic proportions and the subplots are developed. I even buy the collected versions that have been published which have editional cartoons and background material. This is really the king of webcomics in my view.
Anyway, these may not be everyone's cup of Lapsang Souchong but I post their links here for anyone who might want to while away a few hours checking them out.
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei
I just realized that I didn't write about a sixth paradigm of Buddhism in my last blog entry. First of all, I am not really sure there are five or six or even how useful it is to divide up periods of Buddhism like this. It's just me thinking out loud about how Buddhism has developed after reading Hans Kung's treatement of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
Still, as a practicing Buddhist and the facilitator of a practice group in San Francisco I do have a sense of what Buddhism can be in the modern developed world in the 21st century (or at least until everything breaks down catclysmically and we are all living Beyond the Thunderdome).
First of all, I think Buddhism is not going to be about big temples or megachurches (or megatemples?) or even big practice centers like San Francisco Zen Center. I really think Zen Center was a fluke - a fortuitous convergence of the times, culture, trends, and personalities. I think that era is gone. Even Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village in France came out of that era I think. Are there any more big self-sustaining Buddhist practice centers being established anymore now that there aren't a bunch of spiritually adventerous counter-culture types to support them? I don't know of any. Maybe I just don't know about it. Apparently now is the era of putting togther big polygamy cult compounds - not so much Buddhist practice centers. Anyway, from what I see and am experiencing, now is the time for small groups of practitioners getting together in homes, or community centers, or other rented spaces or even liberal churches.
I also think the time of monasticism is over. I think this is a shame actually, and I hope world culture will eventually develop an appreciation for the fruits of monasticism for both the individual and the community at large - even if that monastic vocation is not a permanent one but a matter of extended retreats. Anyway, what I am seeing is intensive householder practice. People who are in between monastics and laypeople as Shunryu Suzuki observed. People who try to live mindfully, and try to set aside time daily to engage in some form of Buddhist practice, and who even try to find times to go on more exteneded retreats (whether one day, three day, week long, month long, or even longer in some rare cases but without permanently leaving job and family).
I also see that those drawn to Buddhism (even those from traditional Buddhist cultures) are more interested in what its really about beyond the myths, rituals, popular piety, and the "health, wealth, love (or lust), and afterlife insurance" angle. They don't want to be scholars, they want practical knowledge that can help them find a deeper meaning in life right here and now. They want something to make them think and to inspire them - not just outlandish myths or dry analysis or wild speculations and dogmatic creeds. And they do look for guides who know the traditional materials but can help sort through them and make sense of them to people in this age and in this culture (by which I mean a primarily middle-class metropolitan culture).
So I say that the new Buddhism will require some new forms of the Middle Way in these areas:
1. A Middle Way between individual practice and big temple Sunday go to meeting practice. This Middle Way is the way of the small group meeting for practice and discussion. In some ways, this is what the historical Buddha probably actually did - gave short Dharma talks to small groups of renunciants and/or householders and then they would practice that teaching through various forms of cultivation (bhavana).
2. A Middle Way between the householder way and the monastic way. This is the way of incorporating Buddhist practice and teaching into a life of job and family with all its demands, challenges, temptations, frustrations, and rewards. This way may seem easier than a life of renunciation but is in fact more challenging and potentially more liberating if that challenge can actually be met. The Vimalakirti Sutra provides a model for this.
3. A Middle Way between an overly simplified or mythic popular piety and the more dry and complex scholarly analysis of the teachings. In this way, those who have plumbed the depths and navigated the expanses of the Buddha Dharma find ways to share the practical bottom line in order to inspire and guide actual practice in daily life. These teachings are imparted in talks and small group discussions, and all are invited to investigate the teachings themselves to the best of their ability and level of interest. The teacher then becomes a facilitator who empowers others to learn and apply knowledge on their own rather than a dispenser of dogmas and authoritarian instruction. In my experience with three Buddhist New Religions and the two traditional schools of Buddhism I have seen various different ways of doing this:
1. The discussion meeting could be a time for infomercial style testimonials followed by an indoctrination using only materials sanctioned by that group.
2. The discussion meeting could be more like a group therapy session wherein problems in daily life are used for reflection on how the Buddhist teachings can speak to and be applied to the situation.
3. The discussion can be centered on a teacher who gives a Dharma talk and may or may not provide time for other people to respond and ask questions (though usually this is done).
4. The discussion meeting can be a time for different people to have turns to do their own research on the topic and present their findings and reflections and to in turn elicit further discussion wherein everyone gets a chance to respond, ask questions and comment.
I wouldn't necessarily link any particular group with any one of those different formats. I have also seen that the various groups I have observed or have been a part of will use different formats depending on circumstances. At Faithful Fools I tend to use the 3rd format with time for discussion more often than not, but not always. At the San Jose Temple the talks after the services follow the 3rd format but with no questions or response (usually), but our study groups follow the 4th. Only one group I know of uses the first format, and that is not even universal in that group. Another group I know uses the second format, but I have seen other groups use that approach from time to time as well. What is common to all four is that they are each attempts to boil down and share Buddhist teachings in a relevant and practical way.
With that, I'll continue thinking more about this in another blog...
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei
In order to overcome my fear, loathing, and general ignorance of Islam, I recently picked up Hans Kung's recent tome called Islam: Past, Present, and Future. I highly recommend the book - Islam is a lot more complex and nuanced than I had thought. It is apparently the third in a trilogy of books about Western religion, the first two being about Christianity and Judaism.
In the book, Kung divides each of these religions up into six paradigms from the time of their founding to the present day. On p. 144 Kung says: "I follow Thomas S. Kuhn in understanding a paradigm as 'an entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community.'" In the course of the book, Kung shows how former paradigms that were appropriate to earlier periods linger on, either casting a shadow over later periods or even being clung to long past their usefulness to the point of becoming very dysfunctional and even degrading (Kung doesn't put it quite this bluntly - he is much too much the diplomatic interfaith theologian).
This is very interesting, so I have started wondering whether it could be applied to Buddhism as well. In thinking this over, I realized that I had already divided Buddhism up into three paradigms (though I didn't think of it that way) in an article I wrote a long time ago for a journal published by the Won Buddhists. In the article I explored the differences between what I saw as a Hinayana focus on renunciation, a Mahayana orientation on compassion, and a New Religions focus on gratitude.
Now I am not writing as a scholar here, I am just thinking out loud, but I think I could also find five or six paradigms in the history of Buddhism:
1. The paradigm of the historical Shakyamuni Buddha's original teachings and original movement of wandering mendicant practitioners. This would predate any of the written canons that we have now - including the Pali Canon and the Agamas.
2. The paradigm of the established monasteries and their more scholastic orientation as typified by the so-called 18 schools of sectarian Buddhism in India. Theravadin Buddhism came out of this period. This is not to infer, however, that Theravada does not also have an international potential (as per the next paradigm) but I think in its pure Theravadin form it would be extremely difficult for it to adapt outside of S and SE Asia.
3. The paradigm of an international Buddhism as typified by the Mahayana movements in Central Asia, East Asia, and (much later) Tibet. I am thinking that this was really established at the time when these Mahayana communities outside India developed their own unique system of more or less self-supportive monasteries - for instance those governed by the Pure Rules of Huai Hai attributed to Baizhang Huaihai. I think that the monastic orders of Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese Buddhism are the present day survivals of these.
4. The paradigm of Buddhism as an established state religion. This was the case in Tibet and in Japan (esp. during the Tokugawa period). The vestiges of this can be seen in the traditional schools of Japanese Buddhism which relied on the danka or "parish" system but are now struggling to find their place in a world where church and state are seperated and their old functions are no longer viewed as necessary. The Gelukpas, in the meantime, maintain a government in exile, but no longer have a country to rule over and they too have been struggling to maintain themselves in a world that no longer really has a place for them outside of the hobbies of wealthy cultural elites.
5. The paradigm of the East Asian New Religions wherein charismatic figures have attempted with varying degrees of success to establish more universal and progressive forms of Buddhism. SGI is a partial example because from their founding in the 50's (as more than an educational society) until 1991 they were ostensibly a lay group connected to Nichiren Shoshu (a particularly authoritarian and aberrant form of Buddhism from the previous paradigm). Better examples, and ones that I think will be more successful in the long run, would be Rissho Kosei Kai and Won Buddhism.
In looking over these paradigm I find that each made important, in fact indispensable, contributions to world culture. At the same time, each of them has dysfunctional elements and/or elements that inhibit or even prevent their universality as well as many anachronistic elements (like a pre-scientific cosmology and patriarchal views about women).
Here is what I would like to adapt and to leave behind from each:
1. The first paradigm is difficult because we can't really get at it except through textual scholarship and archeology focusing on evidence from the second paradigm. And yet, it is important to realize that the true life of Buddhism is not found in that evidence but in the primary and direct awakening of Shakyamuni Buddha, the human being. And that possibly the actual historical Buddha's teaching was not as unilaterally monastic oriented and male chauvanistic as the second paradigm tried to make him out to be. The actual Buddha of history was probably not someone as focused on scholarly analysis and the laying down of hundreds of rules as the Buddha of the Tripitika. He may have been a lot more open to various skillful methods and diverse applications for many different kinds of people in order to lead them all to the same experience he had. This is what should be adapted - and the third or Mahayana paradigm may have been an expression and adaptation of this current that may very well have run alongside the second paradigm without being given an expression in the Pali Canon or Agamas. At the same time, we cannot and do not want to simply reproduce a Buddhism for 4th century BCE India as that world does not exist anymore. Plus there is not really anything to go on aside from guesswork and the systematized teachings of the second paradigm.
2. The second paradigm has preserved for us in the Pali Canon and the Agamas what is probably a fairly reliable (though perhaps filtered and biased) record of what the historical Buddha actually said and did. As such, it is a very human and practical, though rigorous, teaching that comes through. It is not entirely without supernatural elements and metaphysics, but does not rely on them. And its methods, such as mindfulness of the breath leading ultimately to liberation and awakening are such that anyone can put them into practice without having to buy into any belief system or special way of life and see for themselves whether they are effective methods or not. The modern Vipassana movement and teachings about mindfulness and the cultivation of loving-kindness are rooted but not stuck in this paradigm. The downside is that this paradigm insists upon a very strict form of monasticism that is adaptable only with difficulty and I suspect a lot of fudging to modern life, and particularly in non-Buddhist cultures and climates outside the subtropics. It also has a tendency to become overly scholastic and legalistic and has many patriarchal and even chauvanistic elements to it.
3. The third paradigm is where one finds the Mahayana innovations and flexibility that allowed Buddhism to cross over the Himalayas and spread throughout the Silk Road into Central Asia, East Asia, SE Asia, and ultimately to Tibet. It's emphasis on the bodhisattva ideal, the value of compassion in conjunction with wisdom, the use of skillful means, its rapprochement with the humanistic and family oriented values of Confucianism, and the self-sufficiency of the monastics (as opposed to relying totally on begging), and finally the creative synthesis of doctrine and practice among the East Asian Buddhist schools and later the Tibetan schools has provided models of Buddhist teaching and practice that people to this day find very inspirational and meaningful. The downside is that skillful means often got carried too far - to the point of amorality and antinomianism, the self-sufficient Sangha actually fattened itself with landed estates and political titles, and the doctrines and practices sometimes got so complex and demanding that only the elite could even think of engaging in them, other times the practices and doctrines got stripped down to the point where they were no longer truly challenging people to actual transformation but rather became tools for securing the individual or group ego. Many Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese temples harken back to this paradigm - though many times they have also been effected by reformers and progressives and so could be viewed as part of the fifth paradigm. I am thinking in particular of the Fo Guan Sha from Taiwan here. Whereas the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas would be a purer form of this paradigm (or at least that is my impression).
4. I don't actually have many positive feelings for this paradigm. I basically see it as a period of corruption, complasence, and stagnation. Though I suppose that these state forms of Buddhism in Japan and Tibet (in China, Korea, and Vietname the earlier paradigm was simply suppressed by a resurgent Neo-Confucianism). I guess it can be said that at least they preserved the traditions and teachings they had inherited from the earlier paradigm and remained engaged in promoting law and order and various cultural arts. So for instance, the traditional Japanese schools may be viewed quite positively as repositories of the great legacies of Buddhism at the height of its power and influence. There is much to learn from these schools, and many sincere, dedicated, learned, and deeply spiritual practitioners in these schools who are striving to pass on this legacy in a way that will meet the needs of present day people.
5. I have a lot of positive feelings for this paradigm but also there are many things to criticize (and ultimately I opted to join and become a minister in a more progressive version of a traditional school from the previous paradigm). Positively the New Religions have shown how to streamline and adapt the older traditions so that anyone and everyone can practice Buddhism as part of daily life. Many of the New Religions focus on gratitude, ethics, and engendering more positive relationships with one's family and society as opposed to simply focusing on renuciation, liberation, or rebirth in a pure land. In many ways, I think their adaptations of the older teachings and methods in a humanistic and egalitarian fashion for modern people is the hope for Buddhism's continued relevance in the modern world. The downside is that these groups are often too centrally controlled, too focused on a charismatic personality or the founders successors, they have too strong of a corporate ego, and all too often they eschew a deeper understanding of the Buddha Dharma for the more simplistic and accessible teachings of their founders. In some cases they can not even be regarded as maintaining a primary fidelity to the Buddha Dharma taught by Shakyamuni Buddha as they regard their leader(s) as trumping the authority and relevance of Shakyamuni Buddha and the teachings in the sutras.
My personal hope is that the traditional schools and the New Religions will both learn from each other so that the traditional schools will become more humanistic and progressive and the New Religions will deepen their understanding of the Dharma and fidelity to the original impetus of Shakyamuni Buddha's awakening, to the original practical teachings of the early canon, the universalizing and compassionate spirit of the Mahayana.
While I personally hope that the spirit of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo will be widely shared by all (even by non-Buddhists) I also think that it is positive and healthy for there to be so many different traditions, teachings, and approaches, as they all have something to contribute, and in many ways can act as corrective for each other if they are able to maintain a spirit of dialogue, mutual respect, and deep spiritual friendship that can transcend differences in views and methods.
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei
I just wanted to write a note to anyone who happens to read my blog (or my posts in other forums for that matter) and is an SGI member that you had better be careful. If you want to remain an SGI member in good standing, it would be best if you don't let any of your fellow members, and especially not senior leaders, know that you are reading anything I have written or that you have had anything to do with me or those who have had anything to do with me. You may end up getting drummed out of SGI if you do. I am sure the same goes for any association with other Nichiren Shu ministers.
The fact is that you cannot credibly have Daisaku Ikeda as your mentor in life, if you are also learning about Buddhism from other sources - esp. Nichiren Shu sources. From the SGI point of view it is disloyal and undermines the unity of believers.
From my point of view, it has seemed to me that those who are open to learning from all sources have already decided that they are not going to have Daisaku Ikeda as only mentor in life, and I have to wonder how long they will be tolerated by their more true beliving members and by the leadership.
In any case, in Nichiren Shu, those of us who are ministers certainly feel a responsibility to learn, and teach, to foster study and practice. But at the same time I was told in Shingyo Dojo that, "We should always preach with the sutra in hand." This is a quote from the gosho by the way. In other words, we are not to have people just following our own opinions, but to lead them to the Dharma. We are to teach people not to follow people but to follow the Dharma. My own sensei, the Ven. Ryusho Matsuda, some years back confirmed for me that people should "inherit the Dharma directly from the rolls of the Lotus Sutra." He has also said to people taking Jukai (reciving the precept to uphold Namu Myoho Renge Kyo) from him, "Let us study together." There is no presumption that one should pick a person, even a minister, as one's sole mentor in life. As in the Shugo Kokka Ron (On the Protection of the Nation) by Nichiren, we teach that in the Latter Age, the one teacher to rely on is the Lotus Sutra itself.
So in addition to this warning to SGI members who read this blog or my posts or the writings of other Nichiren Shu ministers, I must also offer a challenge. If you are belonging to a Buddhist organization that demands you must take a person (or even an organization) as your mentor over and above the Dharma, and you find that you cannot in good conscience do that, then how long will you be able to really remain in such an organization? Do you pick a person as your mentor for life, or do you follow the Dharma rather than the person? Can you choose the latter and still be a member of an organization that requests or even demands that you follow the person?
So there it is in stark terms: Choosing the person (as demanded by an organization) or choosing the Dharma?
This, by the way, is why I emphasize Jukai (receiving the precept to uphold Namu Myoho Renge Kyo). Jukai is what is important, not picking a mentor, or receiving a gohonzon, or becoming a member in some group or organization. Jukai is indeed taken in the context of a Buddhist lineage and a Sangha, but it is an act that goes much deeper than a commitment to a personal mentor or particular institution. It is a public avowal of a commitment to the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha, to the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Flower Teaching, and to the Sangha of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth (who appear wherever they are needed and not just inside some organizational boundaries, but neither do they reject organizations, even their boundarylessness has no boundaries) - all contained in Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. There are no other rules or regulations or contracts or pledges to sign. No secret hand shakes or decoder rings. Nothing but a commitment to Namu Myoho Renge Kyo itself and all that is implied by it - something that we must work out for ourselves through our own faith, practice, and study (without which Nichiren said there could be no Buddhism).
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei